“This didn’t happen,” I murmured. But still I watched, fascinated.
“On the contrary, this moment both happened and is happening right now,” they told me. “Remember that this is not the Josephina Vasquez you passed without noticing thirteen times on the quad of your university when you were eighteen years old. This is Josephina Vasquez one week after she returned to her freshman year of college.”
I leaned forward.
“What date did she return to?” I asked. Challenging them to tell me, even though they were under no obligation to do so.
“September 14, in the year that your society refers to as 2012.”
I laughed, a pathetically bitter sound even to my own ears.
I knew exactly why she had returned to September 14.
I knew because Ellie and Cat’s wedding had taken place on September 14 seven years later. They had written their own grossly corny wedding vows, and Ellie had spewed on about September 14 being the best day of his life because it was the day he had met Cat.
I knew because on the night of Ellie’s wedding, Joey told me that she had met Ellie the same night.
Knowing Joey, she went back to the party and made a move on Ellie before Cat could.
I hated knowing that.
“Why show me a moment a week after her return? Shouldn’t I go back to the same date she did? Maybe earlier, give me a head start.”
My caseworker tilted their head as if considering their words carefully. “Going back to this date has the highest odds of success.”
“Success?”
“You said you want to make Josephina Vasquez fall in love with you.”
A grin slowly overtook my face.
Even in the afterlife, things had a way of working out in my favor. I somehow had conned this cosmic being into tilting the axis of the universe my way.
“So I should go back here? To this moment?”
They shook their head.
“Watch.”
So I watched. I watched and listened to my eighteen-year-old self spar with the girl of my dreams. He was better at it than I was—and then she appeared to remember who she was talking to and ran off.
“She’s getting away,” I protested, tipping forward like I could fall into the screen and back through time.
“Trust him,” my caseworker said. I wanted to wring their neck. Didthey not realize I hadbeenhim? I knew better than anyone that he wasn’t to be trusted.
The girl of our dreams had just run away from that little shit, and he was sitting there smiling like it was a good thing.
Moments or minutes or hours later, I watched as, against all odds and expectations, she stormed out and confronted him again.
“When can I go back?” I demanded, frustrated.
“I am measuring each moment for the highest success rate,” they said, not taking their eyes off the screen, although simultaneously, they didn’t appear to be looking at the screen at all, their unfocused gaze on some distant, invisible sight.
That was the moment when I understood fully that the facade right in front of me was exactly that—a facade. This being wasn’t a caseworker sitting in a dreary office. They were so much more than that.
Of course they were.
They had the ability to control the nature of time and space.
